Development Economics From The Poverty To The Wealth Of Nations

It is 1868, and Carl Erik's family faces starvation in Sweden. As their hopes fade, they must endure a journey over land and sea to reach a better life in a new country thousands of miles away. Book jacket.

A comprehensive and systematic account of the core topics in development economics, this book examines the reasons why a few countries have achieved a high level of affluence while the majority remain poor and stagnant. It represents an original combination of classical political economy, modern institutional theory, and current development issues, bound together through the East Asian development experience. This fully revised second edition also analyses some recent changes and newly emerged problems relevant to the global economy. - ;This textbook provides a comprehensive, systematic treatise on development economics, combining classical political economy, modern institutional theory, and current development issues. It has grown out of thirty years' experience of teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in the United States, Japan and other parts of Asia. The treatment is global, although the organizing principle is the East Asian development experience. Quantitative characteristics of Third World development in terms of population growth, natural resource depletion, capital accumulation, and technological change are outlined; but the central approach is comparative institutional analysis. "Development Economics" addresses one major question: Why has a small set of countries achieved a high level of affluence while the majority remain poor and stagnant? Why, in turn, has the number of developing economies set on the track of closing their productivity gap with advance economies been so limited? One obvious factor underlying this global divergence is unevenness in the ability to adopt and develop advanced technology, due in large measure to the difficulty experienced by low-income economies in preparing appropriate institutions for borrowing advanced technology given their social and cultural constraints. The major task of this volume is to explore the nature of these binding constraints, with the aim of identifying the means to remove them. Comparisons are made with countries where the constraints have been successfully lifted---most notably Japan and East Asian NIEs. This fully revised and updated second edition also incorporates analyses of several recent changes and newly emerged problems relevant to the global economy: the 1997-98 financial crisis in East Asia, the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 at the Third Conference of Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the deceleration in growth of agricultural productivity in Asia. Exploration of these issues provides important lessons on how to sustain economic growth based on technology borrowing. -

It is 1868, and Carl Erik's family faces starvation in Sweden. As their hopes fade, they must endure a journey over land and sea to reach a better life in a new country thousands of miles away. Book jacket.

Hayami and Godo address the major question of why a small set of countries has achieved a high level of affluence while the majority remain poor and stagnant, and looks critically at the social and cultural restraints which need to be overcome.

Chronicling the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory, this text helps to explain dominant first-mover firms like IBM or Microsoft, underscores the value of intellectual property, and provides essential advice to those concerned with the expansion of the economy.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

The history of nations is a history of haves and have-nots, and as we approach the millennium, the gap between rich and poor countries is widening. In this engrossing and important new work, eminent historian David Landes explores the complex, fascinating and often startling causes of the wealth and poverty of nations. The answers are found not only in the large forces at work in economies: geography, religion, the broad swings of politics, but also in the small surprising details. In Europe, the invention of spectacles doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, and played a prominent role in the creation of articulated machines, and in China, the failure to adopt the clock fundamentally hindered economic development. The relief of poverty is vital to the survival of us all. As David Landes brilliantly shows, the key to future success lies in understanding the lessons the past has to teach us - lessons uniquely imparted in this groundbreaking and vital book which exemplifies narrative history at its best.

Volume I, Wealth and Poverty, addresses domestic or internal development problems.